New Jobless Claims: Up 6K, Worse Than Forecast

Written by Jill Mislinski

Here is the opening statement from the Department of Labor:

In the week ending February 27, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 278,000, an increase of 6,000 from the previous week's unrevised level of 272,000. The 4-week moving average was 270,250, a decrease of 1,750 from the previous week's unrevised average of 272,000.

There were no special factors impacting this week's initial claims. [See full report]

Today's seasonally adjusted 278K new claims was up 6K from last week, above the Investing.com forecast of 271K.

The four-week moving average is at 270,250, down from last week's number.

Here is a close look at the data over the past few years (with a callout for the past year), which gives a clearer sense of the overall trend in relation to the last recession and the volatility in recent months.

As we can see, there's a good bit of volatility in this indicator, which is why the 4-week moving average (the highlighted number) is a more useful number than the weekly data. Here is the complete data series.

The headline Unemployment Insurance data is seasonally adjusted. What does the non-seasonally adjusted data look like? See the chart below, which clearly shows extreme volatility of the non-adjusted data (the red dots). The 4-week MA gives an indication of the recurring pattern of seasonal change (note, for example, those regular January spikes).

Because of the extreme volatility of the non-adjusted weekly data, we can add a 52-week moving average to give a better sense of the secular trends. The chart below also has a linear regression through the data. We can see that this metric continues to fall below the long-term trend stretching back to 1968.

Annual Comparisons

Here is a calendar-year overlay since 2009 using the 4-week moving average. The purpose is to compare the annual slopes since the peak in the spring of 2009.

For an analysis of unemployment claims as a percent of the labor force, see our recent commentaryWhat Do Weekly Unemployment Claims Tell us About Recession Risk? Here is a snapshot from that analysis.

For a broader view of unemployment, see the latest update in our monthly series Monthly Employment Update.